


The brinks of eternity (or something)

by ilien



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon levels of violence, Curses, Gen, Gods and Demigods, Immortal Jaskier | Dandelion, M/M, Swearing, accidentally immortal, happy endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22631227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilien/pseuds/ilien
Summary: Five worlds where Jaskier is immortal and one where he (technically) isn’t.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 62
Kudos: 896





	The brinks of eternity (or something)

**Author's Note:**

> I think there can never be too much immortal Jaskier, so here's another take on the trope.
> 
> This was betaed by the ever generous and amazing [CynicInAFishbowl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/CynicInAFishbowl/pseuds/CynicInAFishbowl) and proofread by the perfect [Eveth_21](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eveth_21), all the remaining mistakes are mine, please shout if you see any!

**1**

"Geralt, I'm gonna die!" Jaskier's sitting on the bed looking more miserable than Geralt's seen him in a while. He's also whispering, which, of course, is explanation enough for the tragic face.

"Stop being so dramatic," Geralt replies. "You're barely even sick."

"Barely?!" Geralt is sure that Jaskier would be yelling if he could yell right now. Instead, it comes out as a broken whisper. "I can't talk, Geralt!"

"You say like it's a bad thing," Geralt says. 

"Oh, it's like that, is it," Jaskier manages to sound utterly outraged even when he's barely audible, that must be a special talent. "See if I ever sing for you again!"

Geralt doesn't consider that worthy of an answer. He picks up his armor and settles next to the window with thread and needle. He's resigned himself to wasting the day in the inn catering to the bard's cold, so he might as well make use of the idleness and the daylight and fix the month's worth of damage. 

"Geralt," Jaskier whispers before Geralt can even make the first stitch, "can't you do something?"

"Stop whining, it's just a cold. You’ll be okay in a few days."

"Few days!"

"It's a cold. I hear it passes. Have patience, get some sleep."

"You hear!" Jaskier coughs. "Some expert. You never get sick!"

Geralt doesn't reply, returning his attention to his work, hoping the bard will follow his advice and get back to sleep. He manages to stitch two tears in silence. 

Then Jaskier starts coughing. It's not the involuntary cough people get when something gets stuck in their throat, nor the soft dry cough Jaskier gets sometimes after singing too much in a well-warmed room in winter — it's deliberate noise that sounds like it's specifically made to annoy the witcher: "Kheem, k-haam, kheem!"

"Stop it," Geralt demands.

"Oh, I'm so," Jaskier says in his normal voice, then gulps, sighs and continues whispering: "I'm fucking sorry my misery is inconveniencing you, Geralt. Huh, almost worked, though!" And then he's at it again, this time trying to hum between the coughs. It sounds painful and desperate, and Geralt forgets to be annoyed.

"Stop doing that," Geralt tries again, "you'll hurt yourself."

"In case—" he says aloud and continues whispering, "in case you haven't noticed, I'm already fucking hurt."

"Sleep. You'll be better tomorrow."

"I don't need to be better tomorrow, I need to be better right the fuck now, how the hell are we gonna pay for the room if I don't fucking sing tonight, huh?"

For someone who can't really talk Jaskier is way too fucking talkative. 

"Get some sleep. I'll take care of it," he promises. It's not that he has much spare coin, but he does have some, in case he needs to pay a blacksmith or a herbalist. Should be enough for a couple of days, until the bard is well enough to travel.

"Oh, you’re gonna sing tonight, I'd like to hear that!" the bard mocks. 

Geralt ignores him in favor of stitching another tear. The bard starts coughing and humming again.

"I said I'll take care of the room!" Geralt snaps. "Go the fuck to sleep or just lie the fuck down and shut the fuck up!"

"I can't fucking sleep. Geralt, don't you see, I can't talk, I can’t sing! What if it isn't the cold, what if—"

"It is," Geralt says.

"Yes, but what if it isn't? I can't fucking sleep when I might lose my voice for good!" Geralt knows it's Jaskier's fever talking, but his tears still smell the same way, and Geralt is—slightly—unnerved. He isn't, in fact, needlessly cruel, and if the bard is really suffering that much—

"There's a little red bottle in my bag. Take a very small sip and hold it in your mouth," he instructs, and tells himself that even in the unlikely event the healing potion doesn't help it'll at least keep the bard quiet for some time, which is probably worth the loss of precious liquid.

"I knew you had to have something!" Jaskert whispers, excited, and gets out of bed, worryingly slowly. Geralt feels a pang of—something, and turns away.

He hears Jaskier fumble with the bag and then walk back to the bed, pop the cork—the smell is wrong.

"What are you—" Geralt is on his feet in an instant, but it's too late, the potion is already in the bard's mouth. "Spit it out, now!" He demands. Jaskier, for once, does as he's told and Geralt makes him rinse his mouth with fresh water.

"What the fuck?” Jasker asks. "Oh, look, it worked! I thought I was supposed to hold it in my mouth?"

"It's the wrong potion," Geralt explains, and he can't even blame this on Jaskier. It's not the bard's fault there were two red bottles in his bag. Geralt curses.

"It worked, though, right?" Jaskier says. "What is it supposed to do, anyway?" Geralt doesn't reply right away. "Geralt?"

"It's a healing potion, too, only—much stronger," he finally explains. "It can be deadly for humans."

"I didn't drink it, though," Jaskier says hopefully, "so I'm not affected, am I?"

"How's your fever?" Geralt asks.

"Much better, why are you—oh. I am affected. What's gonna happen now?" 

Geralt shrugs. It's based on some of the same ingredients used in mutagens. There's no way of telling what it can do. Dead on the spot is the most likely outcome.

Without any warning, Jaskier collapses and starts seizing. 

If Geralt's hair weren't already white, he'd get a bunch of new white hairs over the next few hours. Jaskier stops breathing twice, seizes a few more times, and then his heart slows down just a little and never beats quite as fast again.

On the bright side, by the time he's meant to sing in the tavern, he's more than well enough.

**2**

“How do you manage to get a horse that looks exactly like the last one, every time?” Jaskier asks. 

“What?”

“Roach. I mean, you keep using the same name, okay, I get it, making up names must get very old very fast, but—I’ve known you for over two decades. It must be your, what, third horse in all this time, fourth? And I never notice the difference.”

“It’s the same horse.”

“Bullshit. Horses don’t live that long.”

“Hm.”

“What? She’d be close to thirty years old now!”

“Fifty-six.”

“Fif—are you fucking kidding me? You’ve got an immortal horse and I never knew? Do they breed immortal horses where they make you lot?”

“Not really.”

“Geralt, don’t leave me hanging, you just told me your horse is immortal, give me something, I’m dying, here. I need more words.”

“It happens sometimes. Witchers use potions, spells. If a living being is exposed to them long enough—side effects happen. If a horse doesn’t die in the first few years, it lives for a while.”

“How long, really, is ‘a while’?” 

“Hm.”

“Geralt!”

“They sometimes outlive us.”

“Huh.” Jaskier rubs Roach’s ear. “So, you’re an old girl, aren’t you? Explains why you’re much wiser than our friend here. I always knew there was something special about you.”

“Jaskier.”

“Yes?”

“How long, again, have we known each other?” Travelling together for most of that time, he doesn’t say.

“Twenty-something years. How come you know the exact age of your horse and yet have no idea how long you’ve known your best friend?”

“Hmm.”

“Wait, what are you implying?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“No, but you thought, very, very loudly, and I know you well enough to—”

“Hm.”

“Don’t you hmm me, Geralt of Rivia, don’t you fucking hmm me when you just implied I’m accidentally immortal like your fucking horse—no offence, darling, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Roach doesn’t say anything.

**3**

“Can I ask you a question?” Ciri asks, half-whispering, when they finish building the fire and watch Geralt peeling some roots for the stew.

“Sure,” Jaskier whispers dramatically, “why the secrecy? And why are you even asking?”

She smiles a brilliant smile. “Because it’s a personal question.”

“How intriguing!” Jaskier says and snatches one of the peeled roots to munch on it, raw. He doesn’t care much for the taste, but it makes Ciri smile and Geralt growl, so it’s well worth it. “Go ahead, ask away.”

“How—why—uhm.”

“Now you’ve got my complete attention. What is it, Princess?”

She looks like she’s struggling for words. “I’ve known you for as long as I can remember. How is it that you always look the same?”

“Excuse you, little lady, are you criticising my fashion sense? I’ll have you know, no two outfits or mine are—”

She laughs. “No, I don’t mean your clothes, they’re fine!” He feigns outrage at the word ‘fine’, but doesn’t say anything. “You don’t look any older.”

“I don’t, do I?” He throws a quick glance at Geralt, who seems to be throwing himself into his chore. What the fuck, to hell with it, he can’t hide it forever and this time is as good as any. “My mother was an elf. Well, three quarters elf, technically, that’s why I don’t have the ears, or the glowing skin, but—yeah. That.”

“I guess my grandmother didn’t know that,” Ciri muses. “What would you have done if she’d found out?”

“Lost his stupid head, that’s what,” Geralt suggests. Is that all he has to offer? Jaskier just fucking confessed to not being human!

“She didn’t, did she?” he says. It’s important to point that out.

“Idiot’s luck.”

Ciri suddenly wraps her arms around him. “Thank you.”

He returns the hug. “For what?” 

“For coming to see me even though it could've cost you your life.”

“It didn’t, though. I can’t avoid every place that’s unfriendly to elves.”

“You could at least have avoided the one place where they knew you long enough to figure it out,” Geralt grunts. It’s the longest sentence he’s uttered in, like, a fortnight.

“No, I couldn’t,” Jaskier says quietly, his arms still around Ciri.

“Hmm.”

“Oh, oh, wait a minute, did you know? You knew, didn’t you?”

“What? That you went back to Cintra? You told me.”

“Don’t act dumb. You knew I wasn’t human.”

“Hmm.”

“Since when?”

“You smell like an elf, Jaskier.”

“So, basically, from the moment you met me?”

“Hmm.”

“Fuck.”

**4**

Geralt’s bleeding rather heavily from a deep, but unthreatening wound across his shoulder blade, and Jaskier is sewing it shut with nothing but his own chattering to numb the pain. He knows Geralt can stand the pain, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try to distract him.

“So, what exactly did you wish for your third wish?” He says. It’s far from the first time he’s asked that question; that’s why it makes for a great distraction: enough of a sore spot to draw the witcher’s mind off the pain, not enough of an annoyance to make him run off altogether. Not anymore, anyway. 

“I thought I was wishing for your life,” Geralt says, all of a sudden. “Both yours and hers, to be precise.”

Jasker freezes mid-stitch. “What?”

“Either keep fucking working or leave it be,” Geralt commands, and when Jaskier makes a motion to continue the stitching (if his hands shake a little it’s Geralt’s own damn fault) says, “I wished for the people I care about to stop leaving me.” That’s a fucking huge confession. 

“That’s—actually sweet, in a very intrusive sort of way,” Jaskier offers. He continues stitching as he speaks. “But Yennefer was—very loudly, I must add—convinced that it made her feel things. I never felt any differently.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm?”

“By that point, were you ever gonna leave out of your own accord?”

“Probably not,” Jaskier confesses and something inside him warms up at the thought that Geralt knows that, too. 

“Hmm.”

“So, Yennefer would leave you if she weren’t madly in love, so, the djinn made her madly in love,” he muses. “I didn’t need that kind of nudging, so—what, it did nothing? Isn’t it a little, uh, unlike djinns?”

“Hmm.”

“Spelling it out would really, really help, Geralt.” He finishes the last stitch and bites the thread off. “What did it do to me?” He isn’t really bothered; if it were something bad, it would have destroyed him long ago — on top of that fucking mountain, probably.

“Jaskier,” Geralt turns around to look him in the eye. “When did you last see yourself in the mirror?”

“What, do I have blood on my face?” He wipes the imaginary blood.

“Now you do, that’s not what I meant.” Geralt offers him a damp cloth. He carefully cleans the blood around the wound, then wipes his hands and gives it back. “Did it ever occur to you that humans are supposed to age?” Geralt asks as he carefully, almost gently cleans Jaskier’s face where he just touched it with his hands. “How old are you now? Forty-five? Fifty?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“I didn’t realize it at first,” Geralt offers. “I looked for anything wrong with you for a bit, but nothing happened. And then—on the mountain, Yennefer joked that you looked older.”

“Oh, so it was, indeed, a joke, was it?”

“Of course it was, Jaskier. You haven’t aged. You don’t, not anymore.”

“Is that why you pushed me away back there?”

“I’m not that calculating. I was just being an idiot.”

“Eeeh well, happens to the best of us.” He kisses Geralt’s nose in reassurance. “The djinn made me immortal. Good to know.”

“Not exactly. It bound your life to mine. If I die, you—”

“Oh well, let’s endeavour to avoid that, shall we?” He can guilt Geralt into taking better care of himself claiming his own vested interest, now. That’s pretty neat, all things considered. 

**5**

“There was this guy once, a friend of my father’s, a travelling magician. Not the real kind — at least that’s what I thought — but one of those who do pretty tricks for coin. He’d perform for my father from time to time. He was there for my eighteenth birthday.” Jaskier takes a sip of his wine; this isn’t a conversation he wants to have sober. 

“Keep talking,” Geralt says. 

Jaskier grins. “Never thought I’d hear that from you.”

Geralt growls.

“Eh, well. So, eighteenth birthday. Feast, performers, all that. Mother and Father retire to bed, and the rest of us get spectacularly smashed. Snoring under the table, smashed.” He reaches for his wine again, but Geralt moves the bottle away and he has no option but to continue. “So, most of the guests are snoring under the table or making out in the garden, and the two of us get into an argument. I don’t even fucking remember what the argument was about — something something, magic, something something, long life. He gets teary-eyed, then angry, they teary-eyed again, and then, all of a sudden, he’s absolutely terrifyingly furious. Still drunk out of his mind, but really fucking enraged. Looks at me and says, ‘You’ll outlive everyone you love, and then I’ll see how you sing about that!’ — then mutters a spell and passes out. On the table, rather than under it, which was good for him.”

“And it worked, just like that?” Ciri asks, her eyes huge. 

“Turned out, he was actually a pretty powerful mage. Who would have figured, with all of his party tricks.”

“That’s so sad,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

Geralt gives him his bottle back, which is probably his way to say, ‘I’m sorry, too’.

“Not really,” Jaskier says, shrugging, but snatches the bottle. “I saw him a few years—a few decades later. We talked. He apologised. He remembered what he’d said and done pretty well, despite all the drinking. See, he said ‘everyone you love’, not ‘everyone you’ll ever love’. I—there weren’t that many people. My mum, I guess, and my old nursemaid. Maybe my grandpa, but he’d already died by then. I would have outlived them, anyway, and the curse doesn’t work on anyone I met later. Somehow, the unnaturally long life wasn’t, in fact, contingent on the outliving thing. He said he’d made a mistake in the spell. Lucky me, huh.”

“I’m glad,” Ciri says, hugging him.

“Me, too,” he replies with a kiss on her forehead.

**+1**

Geralt gets to Jaskier a moment too late; his stomach is pierced with the creature’s claw. The creature is dead a moment later, but the damage is already done. Geralt knows wounds like this one; even a Witcher couldn’t survive something like that. He holds Jaskier’s head up in a desperate attempt to—he doesn’t know what. There’s blood in the bard’s mouth — that means internal bleeding, nothing to be done. Geralt is grateful, at least, that Ciri isn’t with them.

Jaskier grabs his hand and tries to say something. No words come out, only a painful moan.

“It’s okay,” Geralt lies. “I’m here, you’ll be okay.”

“Liar,” he hears, and then Jaskier looks past him, as if someone’s standing there — Geralt turns around, alarmed, but of course they’re alone, save for the dead monsters. “I don’t want to go,” Jaskier whispers, almost inaudible. “I like it here.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” he lies again. The only thing worse than Jaskier dying is him dying while begging for his life. Geralt wipes the blood off the bard’s chin and repeats, “You’ll be okay.”

“Yes, I fucking wanna stay,” Jaskier says with surprising strength. “Shut the fuck up, it’s not that bad.”

He isn’t talking to him, Geralt realizes. He’s hallucinating there’s someone else there. He keeps useless pressure on the wound with one hand and holds Jaskier close with the other. This is it, and they don’t even get to say goodbye.

“Please,” Jaskier says, to him, or to that nonexistent person. “Please.” Then he closes his eyes and stops breathing. Geralt just sits there and waits for his heart to stop beating, too. 

It doesn’t. Instead, he feels something under his hand that’s still pressing hard into the wound; it feels like the skin of the wound is moving. Before he can make sense of it, Jaskier draws a loud, painful breath and coughs, spitting blood. Then he opens his eyes and grins. 

“Did it have to be this fucking dramatic?” he yells, looking at the sky. Geralt thinks he hears distant thunder, but the sky above them is blue, not a cloud out of place.

“Fuck,” Jaskier says and looks down at himself. Geralt follows his look—the wound is completely healed. There’s a lot of blood all over both of them and a huge terrifying tear on Jaskier’s shirt where the wound was supposed to be, but the skin is pale and untouched.

“What the fuck just happened?” he demands.

“My sister, being overly dramatic,” Jaskier explains unhelpfully. “She could, I don’t know, stop the fucking thing from stabbing me. Or heal me before I started bleeding. Or, I don’t know, get it to stab me a bit to the side; I’d be just fine then. But nooo, she lets me die and beg for my life, the fucking whore.” Another roll of thunder sounds like it’s significantly closer. “Fine!” Jaskier screams. “You’re not a whore, you’re a bitch, happy now?” The thunder rolls farther away. “See? Dramatic!”

“Jaskier,” Geralt demands again, “explain. Now.”

“Can a dead man get some water, here?” Jaskier asks. It’s an obvious diversion, but Geralt stands up and goes to Roach to pick up the flask. Jaskier follows him and drinks eagerly. 

“So, okay, the story,” he says once he’s finished the entire flask. “I’m kind of not originally from around here.”

He’s probably expecting Geralt to ask questions, but Geralt stays silent, so he continues. “I mean, I was born here, as a human child, but that was—a bit later. Before that, I was...something else. See, I had a sister, back there, and she was, I don’t know, creating the universe. Very carefully and thoughtfully, I should say, because that turned out to be important. Star after star, world after world, planning, drafting, all that.”

He falls silent. None of it makes any sense, but Geralt hums in encouragement. 

“I was young, you see. And probably—just probably, you know, I’m not admitting to anything—a little thoughtless. So, when she asked for my help with a few things, I did as she asked, and then went on to—let’s say, write down, that’s the closest thing, anyway, so—write down some of my own ideas. I thought they were fun. Like, dragons. Who wouldn’t like dragons? No one, that’s who, they’re amazing, I’m very proud. Then, wyverns. They’re no dragons, but they’re cute, too, right?” That’s not the word Geralt would use, but he doesn’t let that distract him. “And then it got a little out of hand. I let my imagination get the better of me. By the time she caught up, there were... quite a few creatures in some of her worlds. 

“And then she did catch up and got absolutely furious, you should have seen her! I mean, she is, of course, a goddess, but not a goddess of rage, usually—unless she’s mad at me. She screamed at me for a bit, and then fished all of my creatures from all of her worlds and stuck them all into one single place. And added some on top, from the bottom of her bottomless heart. And then she said I should have a feel of it myself, what it’s like to live in a world like that and die a painful death from the claws of one of those creatures, and—here I am, eventually.”

Geralt says nothing, processing. He’d have some of that water, now, but Jaskier drank all of it. Or, alternatively, he could use something stronger. 

“We need to get to the inn before dark,” he tells Jaskier and picks up his sword to cut off the creatures’ heads.

“Here, let me help,” Jaskier offers and reaches for a bag.

“So, you’re a god, or something?” Geralt asks as he chops the head of the biggest creature. 

“No, nonono, I’m very much human,” Jaskier says, carefully picking up the head to put it in the bag. “I was born human, I grew up as a human boy. I get sick, get wounded, I can fucking die, as you’ve just quite tragically witnessed.”

“Hmm.” Another head makes its way into the bag.

“I started remembering when I was twelve, I think. Knew everything by the age of fifteen. I don’t have any powers, not even this world’s magical abilities, none. Melitele doesn’t even listen to my prayers, most of the time. I’ll only get back to what I was after I die, and she made it very clear that I’m not to force that outcome.”

“You weren’t forcing anything just now.” He wasn’t. They were jumped, there’s nothing Jaskier could have done differently.

“No, I wasn’t,” he agrees. 

“If you die, you go back to being a god, or something.”

“Or something,” Jaskier nods. 

“And you still begged not to die.”

The bard shrugs. “Like I said, I like it here. Good and bad, but the good is worth it.”

That’s a lot to process. Geralt needs a drink, a bath, and a good night’s sleep, in that exact order, before he even begins to make sense of all of this. They put the last head in the bag, tie it to the saddlebags and head to the village. The sky is blue from horizon to horizon. 

**Bonus**

"Striga?"

"Human curse, nothing to do with either of us. Werewolves, too; humans are fucking vicious."

"Kikimora?"

"My idea, her...visuals."

“Drowners?”

“All hers, what the fuck!”

"Dopplers?"

"These ones are definitely mine."

“Sirens?”

“Mine. Come on, they’re romantic!”

“Hmm. Rusalka?”

“Don’t even get me started. It was supposed to be a mermaid! She so didn’t get the idea!”

“Hmm.”

**Author's Note:**

> There's a scene that looks like a character death, but no one really dies.
> 
> My knowledge of the universe is still mostly limited to the show and a couple of short stories I read decades ago.
> 
> Some of these might have been inspired by something in fandom: a meta, a fic, a discussion or some offhanded comment which I, of course, failed to find once I decided to write this. If you feel like you (or somebody else) should be credited for one of the ideas (specifically, accidentally immortal Roach was definitely something I saw in someone else's fic or comment), please, don't hesitate to contact me.


End file.
